I keep a close eye on what new enterprise gamification companies have to say; after all, I too am in the game and I want to see what my competition is writing.

I am always disappointed (and surprised too) when I see the following texts, typically in the marketing text of a company that touts its sales gamification: “ignite competition”.

Come on! If competition was the only driver for sales gamification wouldn’t companies just be better off with a sales competition and good sized cash bonuses? Why spend time and money on enterprise sales gamification?

We’ve already written about the 6 bad habits sales people have and how that can mess up your pipeline. The main issue is simple: to make a good pipeline, the CRM has to include quality up to date information. Sales people would rather not spend their time doing the quality up to date thing. They would rather do something else.

This post has ten tips about the best ways to use gamification to improve data quality, timeliness and, as a result, the quality of your pipeline management.

“The Power of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life” and Business is a New York Times Bestseller by Charles Duhigg. It shows us recent scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be transformed. It follows corporations and individuals that achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives – transforming habits. Gamification has the same powers to transform employee and corporate behavior. Here’s how.

Using car racing in gamification? Some people think that using narratives in gamification is a gross over-simplification. We don’t.

Let’s begin with a bold statement: narrative-based gamification is the next big thing in game design for enterprise gamification. It is not about applying narrative “cosmetics” on top of enterprise applications.

Let’s assume you’ve decided to use gamification – the use of game mechanics to encourage behaviors – such as checking in (foursquare/swarm), selling (CRM scenarios), completing coursework (eLearning). Let’s assume it is in an enterprise gamification context. Maybe you’re gamifying learning, or call center activities, or sales.

Now let me ask you question: is your gamification project going to be addictive? or how about this question: should it be addictive? are you hemming and hawing and refraining from an outright answer? I was when I was first asked this.

Liz Ryan, Founder and CEO of Human Workplace, tells us in a LinkedIn post that employee engagement is a scam.

Here’s a quote from her LinkedIn post “The Employee Engagement Scam”

“Employee engagement is a fake business term that cropped up about twenty years ago because consulting firms and software firms saw something new that they could scam leaders into measuring.

Measurement is an addiction for fearful business and institutional weenies. They can’t stop measuring things because it makes them feel that they’re in control. When the measurements hit established targets, they feel cozy inside.

Employee engagement is typically measured via a once-a-year employee survey. The employees get to fill out a survey to tell their management team how ‘engaged’ they are, as though ‘engagement’ were a real thing instead of a made-up construct devised to give HR people something to measure.”

Gamification can solve remote employment issues, if used right. My favorite example is giving feedback, the immediate positive kind. Working remotely denies employees the opportunity to get it; this may lead to the feeling that they are working in a void. Feedback – as in “wow, you’ve managed to get so much done today” – contributes to the employee’s sense of well-being and drives them more. Many game elements can give this feedback – and also document it so a human will also be driven to give feedback too. For instance, think of Karma points, the classic reward for participating in knowledge sharing (think reddit). Collecting Karma points provides an immediate reward – but can also get noticed by a superior or peer and get a positive mention. Completion bars (think LinkedIn profile completion bar) can have the same effect

Can you learn something about social and knowledge collaboration from a venture capitalist? As a longtime enterprise gamification person I was doubtful at first. But now, with the Karma app my answer is a resounding “Yes!”.

This July, Aleph VC announced a mobile app called Karma. I wrote about the app’s focus on creating a pay it forward culture and its attempt at gamifying good deeds. At the time the app was not available; the app was released on September 7th. This is a review of the knowledge collaboration and social sharing aspects of the app, all of which may come handy as great best practice examples for anyone interested in using gamification to encourage knowledge and social collaboration.

Many of us rely on LinkedIn as a key HR, sales, career development and business tool. Some of LinkedIn’s ability to engage its users is its elegant use of gamification elements – from completeness bars to competitive game elements that compare a LinkedIn user to their peers. All this makes the LinkedIn environment compelling to many people and results in their investing in making their LinkedIn profiles and the data in them. Let’s examine how this is accomplished and what lessons can be learned for enterprise gamification.

This raises, of course, the interesting question of whether competition – gamified competition as exemplified in the LinkedIn example – discourages or encourages users. More importantly, it makes us carefully consider the use of completion oriented elements vs competition oriented game elements.